The best Windows laptops for video editing (2021)

If you want a gaming laptop with the ability to do all sorts of video editing with an excellent set of ports, look no further than the MSI GS76 Stealth. It’s more like a slim desktop replacement laptop with a 17-inch screen. You can output 8K content over the HDMI port, load up images and videos with the SD card slot, and crunch through big videos in editing apps with Nvidia RTX 30xx series graphics cards. Plus, MSI offers 1080p, 1440p, and 4K display options. There’s basically a spec of the GS76 Stealth for every creator's need.

If for whatever reason you want to stand out for having a laptop brand that not too many outside of the PC enthusiasts community know about, then go ahead with the Aorus 15P. It has an awesome 15.6” FHD 360Hz IPS display with Thunderbolt 4 ports, RTX 30 series graphics cards, and supports PCIe Gen4 SSDs for the latest in fast storage. Although it’s a gaming laptop, it has a muted appearance with a nearly bezel-less screen, so it’s aesthetically tame while also having an excellent cooling system that helps it perform under load. You know, when you’re rendering videos.

The current generation of the Blade resolves some of its cooling issues due to its slim frame and high-end specs. Besides having access to Intel chips and Nvidia RTX 30 series GPUs like the rest of the Windows laptops in this list, the Razer Blade has several screen options, all with sRGB color display certification. You can opt for a 100% sRGB color accurate 360Hz full HD display, a 165Hz QHD display, a 240Hz qHD, a 4K display, and finally a 4K touch OLED display.

Just like the Blade 15 Advanced, the bigger Blade 17 has high-end graphics and processor options, along with QHD, full HD, and 4K touch displays. How does it stand out? It’s got an SD card slot. I think you can notice the trend here — a good creator laptop needs a seamless way to read creator files, straight from the camera. While the Blade 15 Advanced doesn’t have a secure digital slot, it makes up for it in weight and footprint. So, take your pick!

The Zephyrus G14 is rather clean, but has some of the gaming elements, like high-end discrete RTX graphics, a QHD screen for a better-than-HD experience, but this time around it uses an AMD Ryzen 9 chip for processing power.

The Surface Laptop Studio has an interesting, easel-like hinge that makes it ideal for up-close work on the touchscreen. It has SD card slot, Surface Slim Pen 2 support for drawing and retouching, and 11th-gen Intel processors, Iris Xe graphics or an RTX 3050 Ti discrete GPU. So basically; it’s fast.

Dell has been making the XPS 15 for years and it’s sort of a staple of Windows ultrabooks at this point. It also has the suddenly ubiquitous SD card slot, but has a muted, corporate appearance. The keyboard is comfortable and accurate to use for those late-nights and long hours of video editing that you plan on doing. On top of that, Dell moved the webcam back to the top of the display, despite having a nearly bezel-less appearance.

If you absolutely must have a Mac, you should at least go with the latest M1 Macs. The 14-inch MacBook Pros and their M1 Pro and M1 Max processors will absolutely crush video editing tasks.